Sunday, August 22, 2004
Nice Place You've Got Here, Alice
Earlier this month, I changed the tag line that appears at the top of this blog from ". . . because 'how bad could it be?' isn't a rhetorical question anymore" to the longer quote from Hunter S. Thompson that headed my pre-Blogspot blog. As whacked out as August has been, from Alan Keyes to the New York terror alert to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the only sensible way to prepare for September, October, and beyond, which will be ripe with "guaranteed fear and loathing," is to "abandon all hope . . . prepare for the weirdness." At Counterpunch, John L. Hess also feels like we've gone through the looking glass. Everything, he says, is backward. War hero Kerry is being bashed by surrogates of deserter Bush, and gets less love from the VFW than chickenhawk Cheney. Along the same lines, the Boston Globe has an editorial today that's getting linked all over the blogosphere:
Recommended Reading: I wrote yesterday about coming face-to-face with Republican friends, and how uncomfortable it can be sometimes. What makes it less than completely hopeless is the fact that because Republicans used to be capable of doing good, they could conceivably be capable of it again someday. In Salon yesterday, Garrison Keillor pointed to Nixon's establishment of the EPA, and to the Americans With Disabilities Act, which was pushed by members of both parties, as examples of ways in which Republicans have contributed positively to American life in the past. And also:
Earlier this month, I changed the tag line that appears at the top of this blog from ". . . because 'how bad could it be?' isn't a rhetorical question anymore" to the longer quote from Hunter S. Thompson that headed my pre-Blogspot blog. As whacked out as August has been, from Alan Keyes to the New York terror alert to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the only sensible way to prepare for September, October, and beyond, which will be ripe with "guaranteed fear and loathing," is to "abandon all hope . . . prepare for the weirdness." At Counterpunch, John L. Hess also feels like we've gone through the looking glass. Everything, he says, is backward. War hero Kerry is being bashed by surrogates of deserter Bush, and gets less love from the VFW than chickenhawk Cheney. Along the same lines, the Boston Globe has an editorial today that's getting linked all over the blogosphere:
Imagine if supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole....But the opposite is happening here. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad has caused Kerry's support among veterans to erode, and the Kerry team has had to spend an inordinate amount of time playing defense. Atrios suggests the culprit might be the awful, terrible, Bush-hating liberal media, which has played the inflammatory accusations of SVBT as news demanding comprehensive rebuttal from the accused, while treating similar accusations on the other side, such as Michael Moore calling Bush a deserter at a Clark event last winter, as unseemly line-crossing fit only for condemnation.
The truth, according to many accounts, is that Dole fought with exceptional bravery and deserves the nation's gratitude. No one in 1996 questioned that record. Any such attack on behalf of Clinton, an admitted Vietnam draft dodger, would have been preposterous.
Recommended Reading: I wrote yesterday about coming face-to-face with Republican friends, and how uncomfortable it can be sometimes. What makes it less than completely hopeless is the fact that because Republicans used to be capable of doing good, they could conceivably be capable of it again someday. In Salon yesterday, Garrison Keillor pointed to Nixon's establishment of the EPA, and to the Americans With Disabilities Act, which was pushed by members of both parties, as examples of ways in which Republicans have contributed positively to American life in the past. And also:
Republicans have been good critics of government, and good satirists at times. Republican libertarianism is a useful antidote to our Democratic/neurotic tendency to want to put up a warning sign on uneven terrain and make cowboys do their whooping in designated whooping areas. Republicans used to contribute a lot, back before they let the fanatics and teeth grinders take over and turn their party into the Leave Me Alone party, intent on proving that government is inherently inept, and they've done such damage to America in the past decade that will take a century of saints to fix.Which means--even the Republicans as currently constructed might be salvageable one day, but it's going to take far longer to fix things than it took to break 'em.
